1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to optimizing the capacity of a service path network. More particularly, it relates to a method and apparatus for dynamically configuring the monitoring of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), responsive to dynamically configured data monitoring, such that a new optimized service path network is calculated and the capacity of the system is maximized by real-time changes to the configuration of the network and execution of the service.
2. Brief Description of the Related Art
The present invention relates to the configuration of network service monitoring capabilities and the use of data from configured monitors to optimize the performance of service path networks. Network service monitoring capabilities are the capabilities of a system that directly measures and reports the volume and responsiveness of systems that provide one or more Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to other systems. An API is a set of functions, procedures or classes that an operating system, library or service provides to support requests made by computer programs. A service path is generally defined as the connected sequence of network elements that together provide a particular service delivered to customers following the completion of provisioning activities. Service path APIs are APIs whose performance contributes directly to the performance, availability, and security of the service path. For example, a control message to implement a sports channel blackout on certain Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) set top boxes is one service path API that controls a network element in a television service.
The prior art teaches how one may directly monitor the performance of selected APIs and network elements that are combined into services. However, manual configuration of the monitoring system is required, and in large networks, this is tedious and time-consuming. More specifically, the prior art requires the manual preparation of “regular expressions” that programmatically describe filtering functions within a particular monitoring system as required to select particular APIs whose volume and performance directly bear on the performance of the service path. This monitoring configuration activity requires specialized skills and knowledge of methods to decode the APIs involved.
Consequently, in networks having a large number of component servers, the performance of the service path improves slowly over time, owing to the time-consuming, manual, work required to repeatedly adjust the monitoring capabilities targeting the many different network elements. As a consequence of the long time required to manually configure the many points that are monitored in a large service path network, the complete monitoring system cannot generally be configured quickly and the benefits of more rapid network optimization are lost.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to provide an API monitoring system whose configuration is automatically and mechanically controlled. It would be further advantageous to have such mechanical configuration responsive to both manual network change activity as well as dynamically-induced changes that are, in turn, responsive to network optimizations calculated from currently monitored performance data.